The restaurant industry is one of the few places in America where workers from lower-class backgrounds can rise to positions of power and prestige. Yet with over 4 million cooks and food preparation workers employed in America’s restaurants, not everyone makes it to the high-status position of chef. What factors determine who rises the ranks in this fiercely competitive pressure-cooker environment? 

Making It explores how the career path of restaurant workers depends on their accumulation of kitchen capital, a cultural asset based not only on their ability to cook, but also on how well they can fit into the workplace culture and negotiate its hierarchical structures. After spending 120 hours working in a restaurant kitchen and interviewing 50 chefs and cooks from fine-dining establishments and greasy-spoon diners across the country, sociologist Ellen Meiser discovers many strategies for accumulating kitchen capital. For some, it involves education and the performance of expertise; others climb the ranks by controlling their own emotions or exerting control over co-workers. Making It offers a close and personal look at how knowledge, power, and interpersonal skills come together to determine who succeeds and who fails in the high-pressure world of the restaurant kitchen.  

 

Melding the rural and the urban with the local, regional, and global, Levantine cuisine is a mélange of ingredients, recipes, and modes of consumption rooted in the Eastern Mediterranean. Making Levantine Cuisine provides much-needed scholarly attention to the region’s culinary cultures while teasing apart the tangled histories and knotted migrations of food. Akin to the region itself, the culinary repertoires that comprise Levantine cuisine endure and transform—are unified but not uniform. This book delves into the production and circulation of sugar, olive oil, and pistachios; examines the social origins of kibbe, Adana kebab, shakshuka, falafel, and shawarma; and offers a sprinkling of family recipes along the way. The histories of these ingredients and dishes, now so emblematic of the Levant, reveal the processes that codified them as national foods, the faulty binaries of Arab or Jewish and traditional or modern, and the global nature of foodways. Making Levantine Cuisine draws from personal archives and public memory to illustrate the diverse past and persistent cultural unity of a politically divided region.

This book—beautifully photographed and engagingly written—introduces hardworking, resourceful men and women who represent an artisanal craft that has roots in Europe but has been a Wisconsin tradition since the 1850s. Wisconsin produces more than 600 varieties of cheese, from massive wheels of cheddar and swiss to bricks of brick and limburger, to such specialties as crescenza-stracchino and juustoleipa. These masters combine tradition, technology, artistry, and years of dedicated learning—in a profession that depends on fickle, living ingredients—to create the rich tastes and beautiful presentation of their skillfully crafted products.
    Certification as a Master Cheesemaker typically takes almost fifteen years. An applicant must hold a cheesemaking license for at least ten years, create one or two chosen varieties of cheese for at least five years, take more than two years of university courses, consent to constant testing of their cheese and evaluation of their plant, and pass grueling oral and written exams to be awarded the prestigious title.
    James Norton and Becca Dilley interviewed these dairy artisans, listened to their stories, tasted their cheeses, and explored the plants where they work. They offer here profiles of forty-three active Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin, as well as a glossary of cheesemaking terms, suggestions of operations that welcome visitors for tours, tasting notes and suggested food pairings, and tasty nuggets (shall we say curds?) of information on everything to do with cheese.

 

 

Winner, Best Midwest Regional Interest Book, Midwest Book Awards

In this richly illustrated history, Hannele Klemettilä corrects common misconceptions about the food of the Middle Ages, acquainting the reader not only with the food culture but also the customs and ideologies associated with eating in medieval times. Fish, meat, fruit, and vegetables traveled great distances to appear on dinner tables across Europe, and Klemettillä takes us into the medieval kitchens of Western Europe and Scandinavia to describe the methods and utensils used to prepare and preserve this well-traveled food. The Medieval Kitchen also contains more than sixty original recipes for enticing fare like roasted veal paupiettes with bacon and herbs, rose pudding, and spiced wine.

 

Evoking the dining rooms and kitchens of Europe some six hundred years ago, The Medieval Kitchen will tempt anyone with a taste for the food, customs, and folklore of times long past.

The Medieval Kitchen is a delightful work in which historians Odile Redon, Françoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi rescue from dark obscurity the glorious cuisine of the Middle Ages. Medieval gastronomy turns out to have been superb—a wonderful mélange of flavor, aroma, and color. Expertly reconstructed from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sources and carefully adapted to suit the modern kitchen, these recipes present a veritable feast. The Medieval Kitchen vividly depicts the context and tradition of authentic medieval cookery.

"This book is a delight. It is not often that one has the privilege of working from a text this detailed and easy to use. It is living history, able to be practiced by novice and master alike, practical history which can be carried out in our own homes by those of us living in modern times."—Wanda Oram Miles, The Medieval Review

"The Medieval Kitchen, like other classic cookbooks, makes compulsive reading as well as providing a practical collection of recipes."—Heather O'Donoghue, Times Literary Supplement

Sweet, succulent, cooling, and often with a beguiling floral fragrance, a ripe melon can be one of the most delicious things you sink your teeth into. As Sylvia Lovegren shows in this book, the melon’s complex flavor profile is matched by an equally complex history. Cutting into the melon’s past, she takes us on a whirlwind trip around the world, from the sandy stretches of the Kalahari desert to the ancient kingdom of Ur in Mesopotamia, from the exotic oases of the Silk Road to Jesuit outposts in northern Canada, from slave plantations in Brazil to Japanese farms—where perfect melons are grown in glass boxes and sold at exorbitant prices.
           
Along the way, Lovegren details the impact the melon has had on humankind. Moving from ancient and medieval medical recipes to folk tales, stories, growing contests, and genetics, she explores the diverse ways we have cultivated, enjoyed, and sometimes even feared this fruit. She explores how we have improved modern melons over centuries of breeding, and how some growers and scientists today are trying to preserve and even revive ancient melon strains. Richly illustrated and with a host of ancient, medieval, and modern recipes, Melon is a delightful look at the surprising history of one of the world’s most sumptuous fruits.  

Although the archaeology of food has long played an integral role in our understanding of past cultures, the archaeology of cooking is rarely integrated into models of the past. The cooks who spent countless hours cooking and processing food are overlooked and the forgotten players in the daily lives of our ancestors. The Menial Art of Cooking shows how cooking activities provide a window into other aspects of society and, as such, should be taken seriously as an aspect of social, cultural, political, and economic life.

This book examines techniques and technologies of food preparation, the spaces where food was cooked, the relationship between cooking and changes in suprahousehold economies, the religious and symbolic aspects of cooking, the relationship between cooking and social identity, and how examining foodways provides insight into social relations of production, distribution, and consumption. Contributors use a wide variety of evidence-including archaeological data; archival research; analysis of ceramics, fauna, botany, glass artifacts, stone tools, murals, and painted ceramics; ethnographic analogy; and the distribution of artifacts across space-to identify signs of cooking and food processing left by ancient cooks.

The Menial Art of Cooking is the first archaeological volume focused on cooking and food preparation in prehistoric and historic settings around the world and will interest archaeologists, social anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars studying cooking and food preparation or subsistence.

If you're interested in cooking with herbs and want to use the best of Michigan and the Midwest's seasonal foods, then this is the cookbook for you.

The recipe section is written for both the novice and the more experienced cook. Each recipe has helpful information about serving suggestions and menu ideas. Scattered throughout the book are handy tips related to foods, herbs, and cooking. In addition, Michigan Herb Cookbook includes a section on herb growing and designing in which planting, growing, freezing, drying, and storage tips for over thirty herbs are explained in detail.

You will find over 150 recipes in the book's seven chapters. More than half are low-fat, and there are many vegetarian favorites. Also, a chapter devoted to condiments and "little extras" contains various herb blend, vinegar, chutney, pesto, and sauce recipes, such as Sun-Dried-Tomato Pesto and Roasted Red Pepper Sage Sauce.

Suzanne Breckenridge, formerly a ceramics and cooking instructor, is now a food stylist and caterer. Marjorie Snyder is a freelance food writer, a cooking teacher at a junior college, and cofounder and president of the Madison Wisconsin Herb Society.

Food historian Cynthia Clampitt pens the epic story of what happened when Mesoamerican farmers bred a nondescript grass into a staff of life so prolific, so protean, that it represents nothing less than one of humankind's greatest achievements. Blending history with expert reportage, she traces the disparate threads that have woven corn into the fabric of our diet, politics, economy, science, and cuisine. At the same time she explores its future as a source of energy and the foundation of seemingly limitless green technologies. The result is a bourbon-to-biofuels portrait of the astonishing plant that sustains the world.

Milk—“It does a body good.” It’s difficult to deny the truth of the American Dairy Council’s former advertising campaign. From birth milk is the sustaining and essential food of all mammals. It is the first food we ever taste. And yet, despite that natural relationship to milk, the majority of the world’s population cannot digest it in the form most often available to adults—cow’s milk.

            In Milk, Hannah Velten explores the myths and misconceptions surrounding the ubiquitous drink. Modern milk processing produces a safe, clean beverage that is very different from pure milk straight from the cow. Nonetheless, there are many advocates of raw milk that long for the days before pasteurization, homogenization, and standardization. Yet milk in the time before these scientific processes was even less natural than today—known then as the white poison, it was bacteria-ridden, mixed with additives to make it look like milk after the cream was removed, filled with chemicals to promote its shelf life, and extremely watered down.

Now that milk is considered a staple of a healthy and balanced diet, Velten investigates how and why conceptions of milk have shifted in the public consciousness, from the science of nutrition to the dairy industry’s advertising campaigns. This highly illustrated exploration of one of the most fundamental foods and drinks also includes recipes for ice-cream, milkshakes, and even milk paint.  Milk will surprise and entertain in equal measure.

Based on four years of travel and research, Minnesota’s Best Breweries and Brewpubs is a welcome addition to Robin Shepard’s series of guides to the best of the Midwest’s beer industries. From large-scale breweries such as Cold Spring, to chains like Granite City, to individual brewpubs like Fitger’s Brewhouse, Shepard provides commentary for more than thirty beer makers and three-hundred Minnesota beers. Accessible enough for people at all stages in their journeys to discover great-tasting beer, the information-packed guidebook also features a list of helpful books and websites, as well as information on Minnesota’s beer tastings and festivals.
    For each brewery and brewpub site you’ll find:
    • a description and brief history, plus many “don’t miss” features
    • a description of beers on tap and a list of seasonal and specialty beers
    • a space for the brewmaster’s autograph
    • notes on the pub food, with recommendations
    • suggestions of nearby sights and activities
    • general directions to the location
    • Shepard’s personal ratings of the experience, plus room to add your own.

Over the past two decades, the popularity of Japanese food in the West has increased immeasurably—a major contribution to the evolution of Western eating habits. But Japanese cuisine itself has changed significantly since pre-modern times, and the food we eat at trendy Japanese restaurants, from tempura to sashimi, is vastly different from earlier Japanese fare. Modern Japanese Cuisine examines the origins of Japanese food from the late nineteenth century to unabashedly adulterated American favorites like today’s California roll.

Katarzyna J. Cwiertka demonstrates that key shifts in the Japanese diet were, in many cases, a consequence of modern imperialism. Exploring reforms in military catering and home cooking, wartime food management and the rise of urban gastronomy, Cwiertka shows how Japan’s numerous regional cuisines were eventually replaced by a set of foods and practices with which the majority of Japanese today ardently identify.

The result of over a decade of research, Modern Japanese Cuisine is a fascinating look at the historical roots of some of the world’s best cooking and will provide appetizing reading for scholars of Japanese culture and foodies alike.

Set in one of Tucson’s first tamal and tortilla factories, The Molino is a hybrid memoir that reckons with one family’s loss of home, food, and faith.

Weaving together history, culture, and Mexican food traditions, Melani Martinez shares the story of her family’s life and work in the heart of their downtown eatery, El Rapido. Opened by Martinez’s great-grandfather, Aurelio Perez, in 1933, El Rapido served tamales and burritos to residents and visitors to Tucson’s historic Barrio Presidio for nearly seventy years. For the family, the factory that bound them together was known for the giant corn grinder churning behind the scenes—the molino. With clear eyes and warm humor, Martinez documents the work required to prepare food for others, and explores the heartbreaking aftermath of gentrification that forces the multigenerational family business to close its doors.

The Molino is also Martinez’s personal story—that of a young Tucsonense coming of age in the 1980s and ’90s. As a young woman she rejects the work in her father’s popular kitchen, but when the business closes, her world shifts and the family disbands. When she finds her way back home, the tortillería’s iconic mural provides a gateway into history and ruin, ancestry and sacrifice, industrial myth and artistic incarnation—revealing a sacred presence still alive in Tucson.

A must-read for foodies, history lovers, and anyone searching for spiritual truth in the desert, this is a story of belonging and transformation in the borderlands. 
 

You might think moonshine only comes from ramshackle stills hidden away in the Appalachian Mountains, but the fact of the matter is we’ve been improvising spirits all around the world for centuries. No matter where you go, there is a local bootleg liquor, whether it’s bathtub gin, peatreek, or hjemmebrent. In this book, Kevin R. Kosar tells the colorful and, at times, blinding history of moonshine, a history that’s always been about the people: from crusading lawmen and clever tinkerers to sly smugglers and ruthless gangsters, from pontificating poets and mountain men to beleaguered day-laborers and foolhardy frat boys. 
           
Kosar first surveys all the things we’ve made moonshine from, including grapes, grains, sugar, tree bark, horse milk, and much more. But despite the diversity of its possible ingredients, all moonshine has two characteristics: it is extremely alcoholic, and it is, in most places, illegal. Indeed, the history of DIY distilling is a history of criminality and the human ingenuity that has prevailed out of officials’ sights: from cleverly designed stills to the secret smuggling operations that got the goods to market. Kosar also highlights the dark side: completely unregulated, many moonshines are downright toxic and dangerous to drink. Spanning the centuries and the globe, this entertaining book will appeal to any food and drink lover who enjoys a little mischief.  
 

Sydney Saylor Farr is a woman who knows Appalachia well.  Born on Stoney Fork in southeastern Kentucky, she has lived much of her life close to the mountains, among people whose roots are deep in the soil and who pass on to their children a love for the land, a strong sense of belonging and of place.

Mountain food and how it is cooked is very much a part of this sense of place.  Ask any displaced Appalachians what they miss most and they will probably talk about soup beans, country ham, and homemade buscuits.  They may also remember the kitchens at home, the warmth from the wood-burning stove, the smell of coffee, and the family gathered around the kitchen table to eat and talk.

More than Moonshine is both a cookbook and a narrative that recounts the way of life of southern Appalachia from the 1940s to 1983.  The women of Stoney Fork rarely had cash to spend, so they depended upon the free products of nature - their cookery used every nutritious, edible thing they could scour from the gardens and hillsides.  These survival skills are recounted in the pages of More than Moonshine, with instructions for making moonshine whiskey, for fixing baked groundhog with sweet potatoes, for making turnip kraut, craklin’ bread, egg pie, apple stackcake, and other traditional dishes.

More than Moonshine is more than a cookbook.  It evokes a way of life in the mid-twentieth century not unlike that of pioneer days.

Recovering the Life and Influence of the “Mother of American Cooking,” the Woman Who Changed the Way We Learn How to Prepare Meals

In Philadelphia during the first decades of the nineteenth century, a widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Goodfellow, ran a popular bakery and sweet shop. In addition to catering to Philadelphia’s wealthy families and a reputation of having the finest desserts and sweet dishes in the young country, her business stood out from every other establishment in another way: she ran a small school to learn the art of cooking, the first of its kind in America. Despite her fame—references to her cooking as a benchmark abound in the literature of the period—we know very little about who she was. Since she did not keep a journal and never published any of her recipes, we have to rely on her students, most notably Eliza Leslie, who fortunately recorded many of Goodfellow’s creations and techniques. Goodfellow is known to have made the first lemon meringue pie and for popularizing regional foods, such as Indian (corn) meal. Her students also recall that Mrs. Goodfellow stressed using simple wholesome ingredients that were locally grown, presaging modern culinary fashion.

By assembling the many parts of this puzzle from old recipe books, advertisements, letters, diaries, genealogical records, and other primary sources, researcher and writer Becky Diamond has been able to provide a more complete portrait of this influential figure in cooking history. Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America’s First Cooking School begins with what we know about Elizabeth Goodfellow—where she was born, her husbands, her children, where her shop was located. We then travel back in time to discover the kinds of foods that would have been available to Goodfellow and how she may have used them. The book next turns to the rise of both commercial eating establishements and books of recipes. From here, the author explains the rapid expansion of cooking schools, such as the New York Cooking Academy and the Boston Cooking School, made famous through its association with Fannie Farmer, and ends with a discussion of the role of celebrity chefs. Thoroughly researched and including a range of authentic recipes, Mrs. Goodfellow is a delicious exploration of the life and legacy of one of America’s most influential cooks.

 

Featuring a wealth of illustrations, a fungi-filled tour of the importance of mushrooms, from the enchanted forests of folklore to their role in sustaining life on earth.

Mushrooms hold a peculiar place in our culture: we love them and despise them, fear them and misunderstand them. They can be downright delicious or deadly poisonous, cute as buttons, or utterly grotesque. These strange organisms hold great symbolism in our myths and legends. In this book, Nicholas P. Money tells the utterly fascinating story of mushrooms and the ways we have interacted with these fungi throughout history. Whether they have populated the landscapes of fairytales, lent splendid umami to our dishes, or steered us into deep hallucinations, mushrooms have affected humanity from the earliest beginnings of our species.  
           
As Money explains, mushrooms are not self-contained organisms like animals and plants. Rather, they are the fruiting bodies of large—sometimes extremely large—colonies of mycelial threads that spread underground and permeate rotting vegetation. Because these colonies decompose organic matter, they are of extraordinary ecological value and have a huge effect on the health of the environment. From sustaining plant growth and spinning the carbon cycle to causing hay fever and affecting the weather, mushrooms affect just about everything we do. Money tells the stories of the eccentric pioneers of mycology, delights in culinary powerhouses like porcini and morels, and considers the value of medicinal mushrooms. This book takes us on a tour of the cultural and scientific importance of mushrooms, from the enchanted forests of folklore to the role of these fungi in sustaining life on earth.

Whether grainy or smooth, spicy or sweet, Dijon, American, or English, mustard accompanies our food and flavors our life around the globe. It has been a source of pleasure, health, and myth from ancient times to the present day, its tiny seed a symbol of faith and its pungent flavor a testimony to refined taste. There are stories of mustard plasters used to treat melancholy, runners eating mustard to prevent cramps, and Christians spreading mustard seeds along pilgrimage trails.

In this delightful global history of all things Grey Poupon and gleaming yellow, Demet Güzey takes readers on a tour of the ubiquitous mustard, exploring its origins, its use in medicine and in the kitchen, its place in literature, language, and religion, and its strong symbolism of sharpness, perseverance, and strength. Packed with entertaining mustard facts and illustrations as well as a selection of historic and modern recipes, this surprising history of one of the world’s most loved condiments will appeal to all food history aficionados.